The present invention relates to the treatment of waste water discharged from food industry plants, especially poultry processing installations, by contacting the waste water with a source of hydrogen peroxide.
The environmental demands placed on today's food processing facilities, and particularly the poultry industry require new solutions if producers are going to meet market demand without prohibitive cost increases. Municipal wastewater standards are constantly becoming more restrictive as are water usage limitations. The needs for the industry are clear; namely, use less water, use the water more efficiently and purify it to a greater degree while at the same time controlling odor, solids, and oxygen demand before discharge into a publicly operated treatment facility or into the environment.
Over the years, the poultry industry in particular has taken major strides toward reducing the consumption of water by drastically reducing the amount of water used to process food products.
A direct consequence of this conservation effort, however, has been a marked increase in the difficulty of producing a "quality effluent", a term which is used to refer to the wastewater discharge that meets Federal and local environmental permit guidelines.
As a result, food and poultry processing facilities in all but the most rural areas (where more resources are available) are facing dramatic increases in the costs associated with processing the waste water and meeting the environmental standards. These increases are either in the form of heavy capital expenditures to upgrade existing wastewater treatment systems, or in the form of payment of significant fees to municipalities for treating wastewater which does not meet prescribed guidelines.
It is therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a method for treatment of the waste water from food processing facilities and especially the poultry industry, to enable these installations to meet their environmental standards.